Looking back....and looking forwards

It's around this time of year a bit of introspection takes place, looking back at the previous year. I think I'll save that post for New Year....

I have however had a quick look at this time last year. Aside from illness, I was very preoccupied with Pavia and the renaissance flats. Well oddly, I've just finished two more books on Pavia but those zinnfiguren are still staring at me in nothing but primer.....

As I alluded to last post, I was very taken by a post on Martin Rapier's The Games We Play blog on the SOA conference and a sprawling map game set in around 246BC:

https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/2025/11/queen-laodika-s-war.html

I have been thinking recently that it's about time I did some gaming; sadly opportunities are non-existent due to work and lack of space. As I sat at my small desk, my eye was drawn to the plywood sheet covered in model railway grass paper that had been done for DBA games. I used to play DBA a lot. I was attracted by the small number of figures needed for an army which allowed a slow painter like me to see results. At one stage I was alternating painting Soldier King plastics with 15mm SCW battalions and 15mm DBA armies.

Time moves on, as does enthusiasm. Although I have kept up with successive editions, DBA has lapsed as has the painting of 15mm ancients. I also succumbed to the draw of more and more figures which sit unpainted. Some are now out of production sadly. I cannot bring myself to sell them just yet.

And so I found my musings drawing together these various strands - how about some sort of mini-campaign, using DBA and utilising the 15mm figures I have, set around 246BC involving Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms with conflict between them as part of a Seleucid succession crises? Jury is out on involving the Antigonid kingdom. What is needed is lots of core Successor elements + various mercenary types, Greek, Thracian, Galatian, Arab and Jewish.

Sadly, I cannot put it aside, so have found myself digging out figures and cleaning them up before priming. I was unsure whether to go for the black undercoat used previously or go white and used Contrast paint and AP ink washes. So I decided to experiment with both.

A few more awaiting a bit more work

I thought I'd posted picture of my DBA armies but clearly haven't! As it's Xmas, some 15mm ancient eye candy.

This is what I'm hoping to match - existing Seleucid and Ptolemaic armies - the Seleucid is a later one so needs different cavalry.

There are other armies which can contribute useful elements - Mithridatic Pontic and Hellenistic Greek:

Most of the armies were for a Marian Roman era campaign, but even these have some useful figures:

Sadly the big box of Celts is buried somewhere so they are camera shy at present.

If there is interest, I can post photos of the other armies, Roman, Numidian and Spanish.

In case I don't get to post before the big day, wishing all my blog readers and visitors the compliments of the season, whatever your beliefs. May you have a peaceful and pleasant day and receive at least something from under the tree (even if you have had to buy it yourself!). 

Muddling along...200th post

Sadly not a lot to report for the 200th post. It has been a case of cat-like herding of various projects into productive activity at weekends recently...

Enthusiasm and mojo has flitted between various things to do, and heavily influenced by lack of energy and poor weather. I have variously fiddled with WW2, Arab-Israeli but eventually managed to get another Soldier King contingent cleaned up, washed, converted and primed and managed to dodge showers enough to get them spray undercoated black.

This is for Estavia; another infantry brigade of 4 regiments + combined Grenadiers, a Dragoon Brigade and a regiment of Grenzer LI.

After this, there are some additions to the Electoral forces and some rebels / civilian militia. There are also a handful of Fimo personality figures, mostly female. I have acquired some more Rospak horses which I used for my original personality figures, so may add more.

Reading has seen me finish the two volumes of Robert Forczyk's desert war books:

Desert Armour: Tank Warfare in North Africa: Beda Fomm to Operation Crusader, 1940–41

Desert Armour: Tank Warfare in North Africa: Gazala to Tunisia, 1942–43

This covers from 1940 v Italians through to the end in Tunisia. Forcyzk is a US ex-armour (armor) officer and is extremely critical of just about everybody! He starts with known doctrine and works chronologically through the campaigns, providing lots of detail and first hand accounts as well as technological information.

My only criticism is that he (IMHO) contradicts himself somewhat by his criticism of "aggressive" generals such as O'Connor and Rommel, while simultaneously being critical of passive or defensive minded commanders; he is correct that both O'Connor and Rommel neglected supply considerations in favour of keeping the pressure on the enemy, but seems less impressed with the significant psychological advantages that the aggressive approach  gained. I suspect this is the orthodox armor commander in him with all that training on supply.....

Definitely recommended for anyone interested in WW2 in the desert.  

Other reading has been two new books on Pavia 1525 in the hope it will inspire me to finish off the flats that are sitting there undercoated.

The books are The Battle of Pavia 24 February 1525 by Luigi Casali and Marco Galandra a slim 112 paperback in the Italian Battlefield series no 31. This is the English translation and is very expensive for what you get. However it is packed with information - sadly not always referenced, but the extensive bibliography is impressive and pictures. It does suffer from some errors where clearly they mean one side but refer to the other - it's not clear if this is due to translation.

The other is The Battle of Pavia by Massimo Predonzani from Helion. This is his second book on the battle and somewhat confusingly has changed his mind on where the Imperialists broke into the park. He now favours the northern entrance but TBH so far has provided very little evidence for why. He has failed to explain how they accessed the inner dividing wall without first breaking into the surrounding wall. So far he has only mentioned lots of modern authors favouring this approach and that it was more convenient to reach Mirabello. He does however provide various contemporary accounts of various events leading up to the battle and the divergent numbers of troops and casualties. I am only about to read his account of the battle, so will look forward to see if he can provide an more convincing interpretation. The northern gate entry creates a very different battle.  One downside is that the narrative frequently makes references to places which don't appear on the maps provided which makes it difficult to follow sometimes. Again lots of illustrations.

The first book favours the entry via the Due Porte gate and even refers to the same Italian book I have with it's contemporary chronicler.  Having tried to reconcile the various contemporary accounts, It's my view the eastern approach to the park is the only one which makes sense of the various conflicting accounts. However, I will see if Predonzani can persuade me but from his narrative so far I'm far from convinced as he relies on secondary sources such as Jean Giorno who it appears accepted modern names of places at face value without any examination of historical information - the Pescarina Gate for example being derived from reasons other than the marquis de Pescara.

Martin Rapier's report of the SOA conference and in particular the military / political campaign on the internal struggles of the Seleucids within the context of wider Hellenistic struggles between Ptolemies, Seleucids and Antigonids has got me looking at ancients again.....

With leave coming up shortly, I;m hoping to get a lot more painted, so watch this space!

Weekend modelling

Due to work, weather and mood, weekend progress has been slow. Still working on some 20mm 2pdr portees being scratch-built from some Matchbox LRDG trucks = wrong kind of Chevrolet but close enough for me. I bought some assorted bits from eBay a while back - enough for 2 jeeps and 4 trucks (almost) with a few bits missing from one model. The seller had separated them from the sprue so I had to sort all the small parts into bags and try to work out what went where from the instructions = which weren't clear themselves, All the MGs had been taken but if I do one or two as LRDG I have metal weapons I can use.

This week, saw me revisit the Arab-Israeli war with some additions for the Jordanians.

From various sources, the US supplied Jordan with M47, M48 and M48A1 "Pattons". The M47s ended up supporting the infantry brigades while the M48s ended up in the two armoured brigades. While they received M48A1, I have never seen much photographic evidence. An internet search so far has only thrown up a M48A1 returned to the US from Jordan. While trawling eBay, I found an Israeli book on 1967 which I believe is a history of the Barak brigade; one of the photos shows what maybe an M48A1 in Jordanian camo - I have ordered said book as many of the photos were new to me.

So, having been contemplating unit strengths, I realised that while I have been building Israeli, Egyptian and Syrian armies on a scale of 1:30 for tanks, I had not applied this to the Jordanians. Each armoured brigade had two tank battalions and HQ with a total of 88-90 tanks. Each was therefore due an extra model.

Unusually, the Gods smiled on me and without much effort I was able to locate models and parts needed. I even had enough bits and oil drums to construct the auxiliary fuel tank used to increase range. After a bit of work, with only minimal swearing for the fiddly tasks, two new models have left the factory floor.

I have decided they will probably be command tanks for the brigade with  staff stand in M113 and Landrover.

And to any bloggers out there who may have noticed an absence of comments from me, this is due to Google preventing me from commenting using my tablet. In trying to sign in I somehow created an unwanted gmail account (or rather Google unhelpfully did) which I cannot access and so cannot sign in on the tablet, only the laptop. It means posts and comments on lots of blogs will be less frequent - some blogs I can comment as anonymous, which allow you to enter your name, but others (presumably due to permissions for comments) which don't allow any way to comment. The joys of technology......

Soldier King additions

As mentioned previously, I have been working on an extra heavy cavalry brigade stand for the kingdoms of Bravance, Hrvatska and Argozia to bring them up to parity with Arcadia.

Friday saw the Argozian Lieb Cuirassier muster out. These had various planned uniforms - green faced pink, then light grey faced green. A chance viewing of a book on Spanish dragoons provided a final uniform which was combined with a Prussian cuirassier unit - yellow buff faced green.

Saturday saw flags done for each unit, using some old computer generated experiments - forgetting of course that the red ink tended to bleed through white pints.....

Today has seen the bases cut out, magnetised and painted green with household emulsion test pot  paint. Labels have been printed and I'm just waiting for the paint to dry fully.

I'd forgotten when removing from the temporary bases, the paint on the base peels and needs touching up....grr!

Anyway, with the glue still drying, here's the completed units:

For Bravance, the Emigre Cuirassiers (to join the two emigre foot)

Hrvatska gains the Royal Carabiniers

While Argozia is reinforced by the Liebgarde Cuirassiers

Not sure what's next in the painting queue as there are 20mm Indians and 30mm flats undercoated. Or I may clean up some more SK stuff.

Painting progress and winter doldrums

Lack of blog activity is mainly due to the Black Dog caused by grey winter skies, increasing work frustration and not being able to afford to retire as well as recurring aches and pains....

The last few weekends have slipped by without a lot of progress, only managing to clean up and undercoat some more Spencer Smith cavalry for the Soldier King project. As I indicated, completing Dupanen was something of a milestone on the road of progress. Sadly, it's not the end of the work or painting.

Originally, I had intended to use the GDW game Soldier King as is to create armies. The game works on recruitment points. Each province has a value and so to do some cities. To get the value of the province, you must own all the cities. The four kingdoms each have two provinces with a combined value of 12 points.

My initial army recruitment and painting followed this, so each army would have 12 units. The game pieces which relate to the recruitment are infantry, heavy cavalry and light cavalry. Martin SC attempted a conversion to Volley & Bayonet whereby each playing piece became a "column", roughly a brigade of 4 units plus attached artillery. The problem became that the armies were huge, leading to titanic battles.

I realised my armies were too small but Martin's solution too huge - the thought of endless painting was simply not viable. My solution was to double the 12 unit armies to 24 with 4 artillery pieces which seemed about right and much more manageable. Thus, Bravance and Hrvatska had 12 additional units added and Argozia and Arcadia 24 units from the start. Other states (when this idea was incorporated) had been planned on the original 1 recruitment point = 1 unit. This necessitated a lot of tweaking, which I was never entirely satisfied with.

I also realised that light units whether foot or horse were half the size of infantry or cavalry so attempted to work on a half value for them. Again this was not quite right, so in the end I crunched the numbers to get something workable.

The current system is that it requires 1 resource point from the game to recruit a brigade of heavy cavalry or regiment of infantry and 1/2 a resource point to maintain them. Light troops are 1/2 a resource point to raise and 1/4 to maintain, so need to be raised / maintained in pairs. I had thought about keeping the cost as they were specialists, but this seemed to work better. 

I decided that the four kingdoms and some other states are on a war footing from the start - so all 12 resource points are being used to maintain existing units. The only way to increase is by gaining extra resource points, ether via war or diplomacy.....

It means the Estavian Empire and Electoral states are below full war footing - this I justify as due to neglect and ramshackle institutions. There are plans to paint reinforcements for both, but this will still not bring them to a full war footing. States nearer to the kingdoms, being under greater threat, are at full war footing....

The result for the kingdoms was some quick recalculations and a realisation that Arcadia was in effect stronger than the others...

Hence, Bravance, Hrvatska and Argozia will each receive an extra cavalry brigade. This has meant some ad-hoc uniform planning and extra painting. Flags exist only in my head, much like the uniforms.

This weekend saw new units for Bravance and Hrvatska muster out.

Bravance Emigre Cuirassiers

Hrvatska - working title Royal Carabiniers

T'Other Partizan 2025

Late to the party with my report - that's work for you! Anyway, last Sunday saw a trip to the Other Partizan at the Newark Showground.

I wasn't certain if I'd be going until the week before and even on the day was not particularly excited. The weather has been very grey, an old injury was playing up and work has worn me out, This perhaps explains my lack of enthusiasm....

The day dawned foggy - in fact it never lifted all day in Newark! I managed to get there about 12 and left around 3 so it was something of a hit and run visit.

I got a text from David Barnes of the Ragged Soldier blog  https://russetcoatcpt.blogspot.com/ just as we arrived that he was heading for the cafe. I made my way over and bumped into Andy Mcmaster https://blog.belisarius.org.uk/author/count-belisarius not long after that David and his friend Dave (St Cyr blog - lapsed gamer) appeared and then Dillon Browne another VWC member. Sadly I only manager a quick chat with David and Andy, but did have a long chat with Dillon who I've never met in person. 

Then it was a quick visit to Eureka and EWM for some 20mm desert bits, a quick tour of the tables clicking some pics and then another quick tour of the trade stands and games before leaving. I lost the will fairly early on so didn't take as many pictures as I could - only those that stood out. There were a lot of games seen previously, especially 28mm WW2. The participation zone as usual seemed a mix of activity and nothing happening. By the time I got there I didn't manage to speak to either  Martin Rapier or Chris Kent who were deep in conversation / running games.

All in all the event seemed to lack something of the buzz of previous shows, It may have been me or the weather, but I left thinking I could easily not have bothered. There were some nice games but a lot were so crowded, it was difficult to get close to take pics, let alone have a chat with people. It's one of my old bugbears, "demonstration" games which are very pretty, but could equally well be a game played by a group of close friends - not really a spectator sport?

Anyway the photos.

NQM Operation Mercury - invasion of Crete on a rather nice hex cloth

Giant Risk - Europe this time

This year the theme seems to be ships...

Black Ship a European v Samurai game

Desert games - always inspiring

Sudan - Boondock Sayntes I think

NW Frontier Interwar - I'm sure I was outbid on that wadi on eBay!

An intriguing Siege of Vienna 54mm skirmish with some nice Winged Hussars

Then on to the Eighteenth Century  where I took most photos

First Louis XIV period?

League of Augsburg or Marlburian?

Then other end of century with AWI Breed's Hill - more ships - couldn't get very long table in

Then my personal favourites

40mm home-cast Prince August SYW Battle of Kolin

A nice snowy Battle of Leuthen

There were lots more games, some of which I managed to miss! But in the limited time available, I just picked a few that stood out.

More Spencer Smith cavalry are primed awaiting a spray undercoat - these are to finish off the main kingdoms - Arcadia had ended up with a slight advantage so each of the remaining kingdoms will receive another unit of Cuirassiers. After that, there's rebel militia, Estavian and Electoral bits to add. I'm also keen to do a bit more modelling...